Museum Haus Konstruktiv

Museum Haus Konstruktiv begins its annual program with a comprehensive solo exhibition by Alicja Kwade (b. 1979 in Katowice, Poland, lives in Berlin). This renowned sculptor and conceptual artist is a relativist who skeptically questions what is supposedly our reality. In her multimedia oeuvre, Kwade takes this approach as a basis for addressing a wide range of very different phenomena and conceptual models from physics, philosophy and sociology, translating these into her distinctive art. This results in works with a conceptual background, which are as sensorially poetic as they are formally stringent. For the current exhibition the artist has conceived a new, extensive installation: a walk-through grid structure, in which differently sized solid balls of natural stone float above the observers’ heads in apparent weightlessness.

With LinienLand (LineLand) as the title of the exhibition at Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Alicja Kwade makes reference to Edwin Abbott’s 1884 novella Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, in which a square describes its life in Flatland and reports on its excursions into Lineland and Spaceland. To this day, the text is still received as a mathematical essay on the fourth dimension.

LinienLand is also the title chosen by Kwade for her latest work, made specially for the 1st floor at Museum Haus Konstruktiv: a walk-through three-dimensional grid structure, in which differently sized solid spheres of natural stone float in apparent weightlessness. Here, the artist refers to the idea of parallel worlds, which has been the subject of much discussion since antiquity. Against this backdrop, the extensive structure, based on a system of 5 x 5 x 11 squares, is to be read as a multiverse, whereby each individual cubic metal boundary implies a distinct reality. The grid’s steel system correlates with the stones: Kwade adheres to a strict self-imposed principle, according to which, via the shifting within the system, the individual bars form the spheres’ supports. The resulting gateways invite the visitors to enter a multiverse and to experience the gravity of MEDIA ORIENTATION 6.2.2018, 11 am OPENING 7.2.2018, 6 pm the large stone spheres, which bring to mind a gravitational field. The natural stones come from the various continents of our Earth and also symbolize them. The stone material itself, with its various layers that have formed over several million years and make it possible to determine its age, acts as a kind of timescale. In LinienLand, Alicja Kwade has managed to implement her thoughts on space, gravity and time in a fascinating way. Idols, a twelve-part piece that shows brass clock hands arranged on paper, is based on Einstein’s findings regarding the existence of gravitational waves in spacetime, triggered by an accelerated mass. The twelve variations capture various rotational stages of wave motion.